August 18, 2010

Interesting Observations to Keep in Mind in the Future [based on the Wall having a Base Offset of 0 (zero)]:

A Wall Opening with a Base Offset of 0 or less (extends to the Wall's bottom or below) renders that Wall incapable of acting as a Room separator. In other words, the Room will extend through the Opening in search of bounding elements beyond (left opening in the images below).

A Wall Opening with a non-zero, positive Base Offset will act a Room separator, even if the top of the Wall Opening is at or above the top of the Wall or if the Room's Base Offset puts the bottom of the Room above the bottom of the Wall Opening (right opening in the images below).

So, it would appear that the condition at the associated Level is what determines whether or not a Wall Opening will allow a Room to pass through or not.

Adding a Room Separation Line to close the breach and having the endpoints of the Room Separation line at an edge of the Wall Opening disables the stretch grip at that edge and also prevents that edge from working with the Align tool. (If both ends of the Room Separation Line are at the edge of the Wall Opening, then neither stretch grip is available and neither edge can be Aligned.

Stretching the Room Separation Line beyond the extents of the Wall Opening allows the Wall Opening end to be grip edited or Aligned, but will result in warnings about the overlapping Wall and Room Separation Line. If those warnings do not bother you, you can leave the Wall Separation Line beyond the Wall Opening until you are satisfied with the location of the Wall Opening.

Selecting the Wall will display a "Disallow Join" grip at each edge of the Wall Opening. Clicking on one of those grips will reactivate the stretch grip and the ability to Align that edge. Doing so, and enlarging the Wall Opening will allow Rooms to flow through, so you will also need to extend the Room Separation Line if you want to prevent the Room(s) from passing through.

So, in order to edit the width of a Wall Opening that has a Room Separation Line with an endpoint on the Wall Opening edge you wish to move, you either need to stretch the Room Separation Line to get the endpoint off of the Wall Opening Edge -OR- you need to select the Wall, "disallow join" at that edge using the "Disallow Join" grip. If you can easily stretch the Wall Separation Line to get its endpoint at the desired new location of the Wall Opening edge, then doing that and then editing the Wall Opening would be the least tedious way to proceed. If not, either method should work; use the one you prefer.

August 14, 2010

Thanks to a heads up in this post on Steve Bennett's blog, I am now aware that the default setting for island detection has been changed from Normal to Outer, as can be seen on the Hatch Creation contextual ribbon tab, on the flyout of the Options panel, on the Island Detection drop down list.

Outer will only hatch the outermost area, ignoring any "island" areas.

The former default value, Normal, will hatch the outer area, skip the "first" island but then hatch a "second," nested island, and alternate the hatching of additional nested islands, if any.

The default value for island detection is stored in each drawing, and can be changed in several different ways. While in the HATCH or BHATCH command, on the Hatch Creation tab, or on the Hatch Editor contextual ribbon tab when selecting a Hatch object, you can expand the Options panel and use the Island Detection drop down list to choose your preferred value.You can also use the Hatch and Gradient dialog, accessed while in the HATCH or BHATCH command by using the seTtings option or by clicking on the Hatch Settings tool on the Options panel.On first use, the Hatch and Gradient dialog will be collapsed, and the Island Detection options will not be visible.Click on the arrow icon in the lower right corner to expand the dialog and expose the Island Detection area.To set the value directly, set the value of the HPISLANDDETECTION System Variable as desired:0 = Normal1 = Outer2 = Ignore

Reset the default value in your template file(s) if you want the initial value in new files to be something other than Outer.

August 11, 2010

Various suggestions have been made over the years in the Autodesk Discussion Groups and the AUGI Forums for dealing with AutoCAD® Architecture running more slowly than normal. Here are a few things that I have found are helpful in that situation.

Bad Shortcuts: If you have a shortcut file in the AutoCAD Search Path (as defined on the Files tab of the Options dialog) that point to a non-existent folder or file, every time ACA need to check the search path (more often than you think), it will dutifully keep trying to resolve the bad shortcut until times out. One frequent culprit is the Add-A-Plotter Wizard in the Plotters folder. If you copied your plotters from a previous release and grabbed the Add-A-Plotter Wizard shortcut file as well, and then uninstalled the previous release (or otherwise moved or deleted the referenced program file), you will experience delays while ACA tries to find the missing file.

Bad File Locations: Check the entries for the Search Path and other file locations on the Files tab of the Options dialog, to make certain that all of the folders/files specified exist (in the location given). We had an office standard profile that had network path that referenced the hard drive on a local computer. (Don't ask me, I did not set it up.) So long as that computer was logged into the network, all was well. As soon as it was logged off, things slowed down, while waiting for the search for that file/path to time out. It took a while for me to realize that the speed issues I was having only happened after 5:00 pm, and it was only after I found the improper pathing that I understood why.

August 05, 2010

Those planning to go to Autodesk University 2010 who have not spent much time on the AU Online site lately may not be aware that, unlike recent years, registration this year will not open in August but instead will start on September 14.

If you are not already registered at the AU Online site, do so now, and you will be able to register a week early, starting September 7.

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About Me

I am an architect employed by EwingCole in its Philadelphia office, currently serving as the Design Technology Manager. In addition to using ADT/ACA and Revit on the job, I serve as a moderator in the AUGI Forums and formerly served as a facilitator for the Autodesk ADT/ACA Discussion Groups.